Member-only story
Scientific Writing in the Age of AI: Why We Still Need to Teach It
The question came during a quiet moment after class. As a university lecturer teaching scientific writing, I had just finished explaining the proper structure of a research paper when a thought struck me: In an age where artificial intelligence can generate well-structured scientific papers, are we teaching an obsolete skill?
This wasn’t just an idle concern. As AI technology becomes increasingly sophisticated, it can now handle many aspects of scientific writing that we traditionally teach our students — proper formatting, citation management, even the construction of coherent arguments. It raised a fundamental question: Do we still need to teach students how to write scientific papers with certain standards? More fundamentally, is scientific writing itself still needed?
The easy answer would be to say yes and move on. But the reality is more nuanced and fascinating. To understand why scientific writing education remains crucial, we need to look beyond the final product — the paper itself — and examine what happens in a student’s mind during the writing process.
Think about learning to cook. You could argue that with meal delivery services and ready-made meals, learning to cook is unnecessary. But anyone who has mastered cooking knows that it teaches far more than just how to…
